The creation of a new star is an intense and powerful process. As this latest Hubble photo reveals, it can also be absolutely beautiful.
PUBLISHED 3 DAYS AGO
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Photo credit: NASA, ESA, and K. Stapelfeldt (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
The wonders of space are constantly fascinating, and thanks to photos like this from NASA's Hubble telescope, we get to see all the beauty it has to offer without ever leaving Earth. For the vast majority of people alive today, visiting space won't be possible. Space exploration is gradually becoming more commoditized and available to more people, but it'll still be a long time before it's widely accessible to everyone.
Until that day comes, instruments like Hubble are essential for bringing the beauty of space to folks who can't see it for themselves. In 2021 alone, Hubble's shared some truly jaw-dropping photos. We've seen pictures of dying stars, a 'star factory' galaxy, strange 'golden rings,' and plenty more. With the James Webb Space Telescope set to launch this December, these images and discoveries will be even more plentiful than they are today.
RELATED: This Amazing Hubble Photo Shows A Star Dying Before Our Eyes
On November 12, NASA shared one of the latest Hubble findings. The image above shows a few bright stars lingering in space. Nothing unusual, right? That's true until you notice the stunning blue gas floating all around them. It's whispy, appears incredibly prevalent in this chunk of space, and has a deep blue color that's absolutely mesmerizing. Just when you think you've seen everything space has to offer, Hubble comes back with something like this and proves you wrong.
The wonders of space are constantly fascinating, and thanks to photos like this from NASA's Hubble telescope, we get to see all the beauty it has to offer without ever leaving Earth. For the vast majority of people alive today, visiting space won't be possible. Space exploration is gradually becoming more commoditized and available to more people, but it'll still be a long time before it's widely accessible to everyone.
Until that day comes, instruments like Hubble are essential for bringing the beauty of space to folks who can't see it for themselves. In 2021 alone, Hubble's shared some truly jaw-dropping photos. We've seen pictures of dying stars, a 'star factory' galaxy, strange 'golden rings,' and plenty more. With the James Webb Space Telescope set to launch this December, these images and discoveries will be even more plentiful than they are today.
RELATED: This Amazing Hubble Photo Shows A Star Dying Before Our Eyes
On November 12, NASA shared one of the latest Hubble findings. The image above shows a few bright stars lingering in space. Nothing unusual, right? That's true until you notice the stunning blue gas floating all around them. It's whispy, appears incredibly prevalent in this chunk of space, and has a deep blue color that's absolutely mesmerizing. Just when you think you've seen everything space has to offer, Hubble comes back with something like this and proves you wrong.
What's Causing This Gorgeous Blue Color
As NASA explains, this strange blue gas (also known as a 'reflection nebula'), is the result of a protostar. A protostar is a very young star that's building up mass from a molecular cloud. Protostars have an incredibly dense and hot core, can last anywhere between 100,000 and 10 million years, and are best thought of as 'baby stars.' If the protostar gathers enough mass over the years, it then starts the nuclear fusion process and eventually generates its own starlight/energy.
While all of this is happening, protostars accumulate an enormous amount of gas and dust. When nearby stars shine their light on this gas, it creates the reflection nebulae seen in the photos above. For this particular protostar, NASA says, "Because of the way light scatters when it hits the fine dust of the interstellar medium, these nebulae are often bluish in color." In other words, it's nothing short of impressive. Here we have a star in its earliest days, generating tremendous heat, and gathering all of this gas that's then turned into a dazzling spectacle. If that's not impressive, we aren't sure what is.
Hubble gets in the festive mood with an image of the Snowman Nebula
By Georgina Torbet
By Georgina Torbet
November 14, 2021
With the holidays approaching and winter closing in in the northern hemisphere, the Hubble Space Telescope is getting into a festive mood with this week’s image of the Snowman Nebula.
This nebula, located in the constellation of Puppis, is around 6,000 light-years away from Earth. It is a type called an emission nebula, which is a shape formed from ionized gas. As stars are born within the nebula, they give off energy in the form of radiation. This radiation interacts with the gas around them, ionizing it and making it glow. It is this ionization that gives nebulae their beautiful colors and shapes.
With the holidays approaching and winter closing in in the northern hemisphere, the Hubble Space Telescope is getting into a festive mood with this week’s image of the Snowman Nebula.
This nebula, located in the constellation of Puppis, is around 6,000 light-years away from Earth. It is a type called an emission nebula, which is a shape formed from ionized gas. As stars are born within the nebula, they give off energy in the form of radiation. This radiation interacts with the gas around them, ionizing it and making it glow. It is this ionization that gives nebulae their beautiful colors and shapes.
The Snowman Nebula is an emission nebula that resides in the constellation Puppis in the southern sky, about 6,000 light-years away from Earth. Emission nebulae are diffuse clouds of gas that have become so charged by the energy of nearby massive stars that they glow with their own light.NASA, ESA, and J. Tan (Chalmers University of Technology); Processing; Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
If you’re wondering why this nebula is named the Snowman when it doesn’t look very recognizable in this image, it’s because this particular picture only captures a fraction of the nebula’s total shape. To see this image in its larger context of the nebula, the Hubble scientists also shared the bonus image below:
If you’re wondering why this nebula is named the Snowman when it doesn’t look very recognizable in this image, it’s because this particular picture only captures a fraction of the nebula’s total shape. To see this image in its larger context of the nebula, the Hubble scientists also shared the bonus image below:
The Hubble Space Telescope captured just a small segment of the larger Snowman Nebula.NASA, ESA, J. Tan (Chalmers University of Technology), and DSS; Processing; Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
The smaller image on the left shows the nebula in its entirety. It has a dual-lobe shape, with one round lobe being considerably larger than the other. It is this configuration that gave the nebula its name, with the appearance of a snowman on its side.
“From a telescope on Earth, the Snowman looks a bit like a dual-lobed ball of gas, but this Hubble Space Telescope image captures the details of sweeping curves of bright gas and dark knots of dust in a small section of the nebula,” the Hubble scientists write. “The Snowman is also known as Sharpless 2-302, one of the objects in a catalog of mostly emission nebulae that was compiled by astronomer Stewart Sharpless as he sought to identify areas of interstellar ionized hydrogen, or HII regions.”
The smaller image on the left shows the nebula in its entirety. It has a dual-lobe shape, with one round lobe being considerably larger than the other. It is this configuration that gave the nebula its name, with the appearance of a snowman on its side.
“From a telescope on Earth, the Snowman looks a bit like a dual-lobed ball of gas, but this Hubble Space Telescope image captures the details of sweeping curves of bright gas and dark knots of dust in a small section of the nebula,” the Hubble scientists write. “The Snowman is also known as Sharpless 2-302, one of the objects in a catalog of mostly emission nebulae that was compiled by astronomer Stewart Sharpless as he sought to identify areas of interstellar ionized hydrogen, or HII regions.”
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